Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citigroup, today admitted that staff numbers in London and New York will be hit "heavily" as the US banking giant revealed plans to cut 52,000 staff across the globe.

The bank announced one of the biggest single employment culls in corporate history in electronic briefings with staff today.

Citigroup employs 11,000 people in the UK, including 1,800 staff at Egg, the internet banking group that it acquired from Prudential, the British insurance group, in May last year.

Speaking in Dubai, Sir Win said it would be irresponsible for Citigroup and other banks not to look at staff numbers in the current climate.

He said: "What all of us have done, and perhaps injudiciously, we’ve added a lot of people over... this very benign period.

“...Those job losses will obviously fall particularly heavily on the financial sector", Sir Win added.

"Certainly they will fall particularly heavily on London and New York.”

Citigroup said today the job losses will be achieved through redundancies, through leavers not being replaced and through asset disposals. Around 25,000 Citigroup people are in the process of transferring to new owners as a result of the bank's asset sales.

Headcount would be reduced by about 20 per cent from peak levels, said Citigroup, which has already reduced its employment numbers by 23,000 since the end of last year, and means a total of 75,000 will have left the group within months.

The axe could fall very quickly. Citigroup described the plan to cut from the current 352,000 staff to around 300,000 as a "near-term target" and reduce its capital expenditure by 20 per cent. Shares in Citigroup fell by 5.46 per cent to $9 today.

The group, which until the credit crunch was the biggest bank in the world, has been hit by the souring of US sub-prime loans and other assets and has been bailed out with fresh capital from its shareholders and from the US Government.

The bank detailed today that it has accessed $25 billion (£16.6 billion) in funding from the Government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), which was set up to help America's struggling banks but is now under increasing pressure to bail out the country's flailing carmakers.

Vikram Pandit, chief executive of Citigroup, said the underlying business remained strong and revenues had been stable. He also announced plans to pull out of riskier businesses.

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